


Marked Man

by JasperIsAFanboy



Series: Werewolves of Dunwall [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 03:03:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6498259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JasperIsAFanboy/pseuds/JasperIsAFanboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For three weeks, Teague eyed the moon with something akin to existential dread. He managed to stay busy during the day, keeping all thoughts of the moon and the transformation he might endure with it at bay. But at night, when he had naught occupying him but his thoughts, he stared at the sky and trembled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marked Man

**Author's Note:**

> As promised, the sequel to "Blood On My Name." You. Rather have to read that one first. Go on, I'll wait.
> 
> Welcome back. This one turned out less horror and more slash, but honestly who's complaining. Not me. I borrowed a bit of lore from "The Wolfman" for this. If you catch it, well done you. If not, oh well.
> 
> Title refers to a Mieka Pauley song.

For three weeks, Teague eyed the moon with something akin to existential dread. He managed to stay busy during the day, keeping all thoughts of the moon and the transformation he might endure with it at bay. But at night, when he had naught occupying him but his thoughts, he stared at the sky and trembled.

His wounds had healed quickly. The surgeon who served the City Watch and had treated Teague was mystified, remarking more than once that he’d never seen wounds so dire knit so speedily. He’d meant the remarks to be comforting, but they only increased Teague’s anxiety. His research had mentioned that if the infection, so to speak, took hold in a survivor of a werewolf attack, their injuries would heal with unnatural speed. By the time the moon was half-full, barely scars remained of the wounds on his face, and the bite looked no newer than the other myriad scars striping his body. His fellow Overseers congratulated him on his quick recovery, and he accepted their remarks with a strained smile and a sick wash of fear and cold sweat. 

The psychic wounds were far slower to heal; every night, when he finally managed to sleep, nightmares and worse assaulted him. The nightmares were more welcome, somewhat perversely, if only because they were merely his memories of the fight playing on repeat like an audiograph card. He did not wake in terror from these. Occasionally he dreamed he was watching the werewolf tearing through the Abbey. These he woke sweating and gasping from, but even these paled in comparison to the dreams he considered the worst of all.

These came only as the moon waxed past half. They were not dissimilar to the dreams of the wolf in the Abbey. But whereas in those dreams he only watched the wolf, like a disembodied spirit in the corner of the room, in the others he was the wolf. Its perspective was his own; he felt the blood on his face and skin, tasted it, smelled it and the rank fear as the Overseers were cut down like wheat in a field. He wondered, with a sick curiosity, if the wolf in his dreams was what he’d really look like; it was a massive animal, a match for the wolf that had bitten him, which was nothing short of astounding. That animal had been five feet at the shoulders with all four paws on the ground; upright, like a Tyvian ice bear, it was between ten and eleven feet. In Teague’s dreams, the wolf was grey and brown, thick fur rippling over heavy muscle. The bullets and blades of the Overseers were no match for it, and it wielded a terrifying physical power with ease and glee and grace. When he saw through the dream-wolf’s eyes, he felt that glee, that joy in causing terror and destruction, and feared it. He enjoyed the slaughter, and that made those dreams infinitely worse, to him, than the nightmares.

He wished he hadn’t lost his gun in the Flooded District during his disastrous attempt to hunt down the wolf. He’d had silver bullets made; he could turn them on himself if he did transform, or sooner to spare himself. But they were lost with the gun. He could, he supposed, have more made, but not only were they prohibitively expensive, deep down he wasn’t certain that he truly needed to swallow a bullet. Aside from the speed with which his wounds had healed and his dreams, there were no concrete signs he’d been truly infected. It was possible that the legends were merely legends. There was no sense in killing himself unless he really did transform.

But Teague was not the only person to worry. Lieutenant Geoff Curnow of the City Watch contacted him regularly; Curnow was aware of Teague’s belief that the beast in the Flooded District was a werewolf, and he was also aware of the legends. He shared Teague’s concerns that he’d been infected. Teague downplayed his constant fear and his potential symptoms, trying to keep Curnow ignorant and in the dark. He didn’t know what Curnow would do if his suspicions were aroused. So far he thought he’d convinced Curnow enough not to watch him constantly, but evidently not enough to get him to leave Teague alone. Teague thought he saw rather more men of the watch around the Abbey as the full moon drew nearer, though it could have been mere paranoia.

The other concerned party was a fellow Overseer, Cornelius Dee. He was the first Overseer to take the beast in the Flooded District seriously, and the second to suspect it was a werewolf. (Teague was the first to think werewolf, but they likely would have come to the conclusion simultaneously if they’d worked together.) Dee was a compulsive researcher, the sort of man who dove headlong into subjects that interested him and put the acquisition of knowledge above everything else. He spend more time in the records room than anyone or anywhere else, and knew more about black magic, heretics, and pre-Abbey folklore than anyone in the Abbey of the Everyman, including the High Overseer. Though Teague never told him of his dreams, Dee nevertheless watched him as he would a rabid hound. Dee knew Teague had been bitten, and he knew how quickly he’d healed. Though Dee had likely not lifted a sword in years, he was just as zealous as his fellows; if he thought Teague was a danger, he’d not hesitate to strike him down. (Or try to, anyway.) Teague resolved to watch him closely.

Meanwhile, the moon continued to wax. The day before it was to be full, Teague came up with an excuse to be away from his duties and the Abbey. He didn’t want to risk transforming in his bunk. His dreams were worsening, becoming more and more the dreams in which he was the wolf. He wasn’t able to leave the city, but he made it to the edges of the Flooded District. Dee had tried to follow him, but he was too obvious, even in plainclothes; beneath his Overseer hood, he sported long ginger hair in a ponytail and it gleamed like fire in the late afternoon sun. Teague lost him with an ease that was almost embarrassing.

Harder to dodge and lose were the City Watch officers and tails he encountered. Twice he realised he was being followed, and resolved to keep to side streets and alleys where a tail would be easier to spot. He lost even these eventually, for once glad of his shady past; he’d never have survived it if he couldn’t lose a determined lawman following him.

He deemed the Flooded District far enough from the Abbey. The buildings near the edge, where he holed up, tended to be rather run-down, though not as decayed as within the district proper. No one wanted to live so close to Rudshore’s waters. Even the local indigents had taken themselves off, thanks to the beast. Teague hoped he wouldn’t have reason to be grateful for the area’s desolation. He found an empty apartment and barricaded himself in. The apartment had a balcony, but it was a full two storeys off the ground. Surely even in a bestial state he wouldn’t risk the jump.

He sat against the wall, as far from the window as he could get. Maybe if he didn’t let the moonlight touch him, or look at the moon, he wouldn’t turn. He was reaching and he knew it, but he needed some kind of hope desperately.

The sun seemed to set with excruciating slowness. He watched it slant through the rooftops, casting them in bronze and copper and bloody crimson, shadows deepening to blue and purple. He tried to keep his mind off of what might be awaiting him at moonrise, but his thoughts kept coming back to it. Would it be quick and painless, or slow and torturous? Would he retain enough of himself, enough of his humanity, to keep from escaping the apartment and wreaking havoc, or would he become a beast in mind as well as body? Perhaps he should have taken chains from the kennel or something. But that might have led to his discovery, and he was loath for anyone to be aware of it.

Eventually the sun dipped below the horizon. Night had fallen.

At first it seemed like nothing would happen. He felt nothing but his own nervous apprehension, which now paradoxically increased the longer nothing happened. At this rate, he’d have a nervous breakdown before morning, unless he changed. He almost welcomed the prospect just for some relief from the dread.

Despite the hypervigilance he was exerting over his body, the beginning of the change went unnoticed for a moment or two. 

The tops of his hands began to itch beneath his gloves. Thinking it was merely nervous sweat, he pulled off his gloves to wipe his hands on his trousers. He caught sight of his hands and gasped. Hair was spreading across the backs of his hands. The itching spread up his arms and down his torso. He frantically shed his jacket and white collar and unbuttoned his shirt. Hair was spreading across his chest now, too, itching as maddeningly as a new beard. For a moment the sheer oddness of it was stronger than the fear; while he was hardly hairless, he’d never been a truly hirsute man, and to see so much hair on himself was simply bizarre.

But then his spine let out a barrage of cracks as his vertebrae began to realign, and he cried out in pain. He fell forward onto his hands and knees in time to see the bones of his hands stretching and changing into paws. He cried out again, the sound more animal than human, as his skeleton began to rearrange itself. Bones were stretching, shifting as they altered his body. Muscle swelled and flowed beneath his skin to follow his adjusted bones, for a moment outpacing his skin. It ached horribly, and he feared his skin would split. His clothing certainly did, ripping along the seams as it failed to contain him. He thrashed and writhed as his limbs contorted into increasingly less human configurations. He tried to recite the Litany on the White Cliff, but his face was too changed for human speech. He could not get the words out past a rapidly elongating mouth full of lupine teeth.

And then he lost all human awareness.

 

That night, a new howl echoed through the Flooded District. Deeper in the district, in the old Chamber of Commerce building, an immense wolf’s ears twitched and perked at the sound. Its big furry head turned towards the sound. It tilted its muzzle back and sniffed the air. Its lips peeled away from its teeth in a soundless snarl as it trotted towards the exit.

 

Teague awoke the next morning in an empty apartment off John Clavering Boulevard. He’d been curled up like a hound, hands tucked under his cheek. He was naked and covered in blood, its iron-copper taste thick in his mouth still. He slowly uncurled, groaning aloud; his whole body ached miserably, every muscle and tendon feeling overused. Dried blood flaked from his skin as he moved, cracking like paint. He stared in horror at the gore coating his hands.

“What did I do?” he whispered hoarsely.

He had to get out of the apartment, though he wasn’t sure how, being completely nude. He looked around. Whoever lived there hadn’t moved out; the place was still furnished. He slowly forced himself to stand. He had to find out if they were still in the apartment, dead or alive. He pushed his hands through his hair, shuddering as he realised the strands were as sticky as his skin with blood.

He walked through the apartment, bare feet padding softly on the floor, and found no sign of its occupants. He found no additional blood, so what was coating him didn’t belong to the apartment’s occupants. Evidently they were away. Were they out of the city?

Or informing the Watch that a naked man covered in blood was in their home?

Or a wolf?

Teague had to act quickly, in case they really had gone to the City Watch. He went into the bedroom and found clothing that might fit him well enough that people wouldn’t notice if the trousers were too short, or too wide, or the shirt too baggy. He then went into the bathroom and cleaned off as much of the blood as best and quickly as he could. 

While he washed and dressed, he tried to figure out where he could go. He’d arranged to be away from the Abbey for three days and as many nights, one of which was now gone. Returning to the Abbey early would likely raise suspicion. Not to mention he had no idea what he’d done last night; he’d evidently killed, if the blood was any clue, but beyond that he was in the dark. Where could he go? Not to Curnow, since he’d turn him in as soon as look at him, especially if he’d killed. Unless he could blame any killings on the Flooded District werewolf, but since he didn’t know where he’d been, that might be a bad idea; the werewolf had not strayed from the Flooded District. If Teague hadn’t stayed in the Flooded District, blaming whatever he’d done on the other werewolf might arouse more suspicion than it allayed. And of course the Abbey was out of the question.

He left the apartment without coming to a decision. He kept his head down, his un-slicked hair hanging about his face and obscuring his features (like his damnably recognisable ears), and affected the manner of a man badly hungover. If he didn’t want to be recognised, he wouldn’t be. He was grateful for the anonymity afforded by an Overseer’s mask and hood; without it, no one outside the Abbey would know his face. He passed any number of people and listened closely to their conversations, but heard naught of any new beasts prowling Dunwall. Apparently whatever he’d done was still unknown.

It wasn’t until he glanced up to see where his feet had carried him that he realised he’d gone down the same street on which he’d met the werewolf. He snorted. Perhaps he’d meet the wolf again, find out who he was under the fur. He headed down the same alley to the cul-de-sac. It was empty, though he could see old bloodstains on the ground.

Suddenly he felt foolish. What was he doing? There was no point to this; he had to figure out what he’d done the previous night, not wander back to where he’d been attacked. He’d learn nothing there, and even if he did see the wolf in its human form, he wouldn’t know who he was looking at. As far as he knew, the wolf could be anyone. By the Void, the wolf could be Empress Jessamine herself. He turned to leave and felt a prick at the back of his neck, like an insect bite. The world blurred and swam, and his knees buckled. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

 

When he woke, Teague found himself tied to a chair in a crumbling apartment. Mildew and damp rot smells flooded his nose, making him sneeze. He saw with a jolt that it was late afternoon, maybe even early evening already.

A footstep sounded behind him, and three people came into view. Two of them wore full whaling kit, masks and all, one in red and the other in blue. The third also wore red, but eschewed the mask. Teague saw with a jolt the scar crossing his right eye. He hadn’t recognised him before, clad as he’d been in ordinary clothing, or learned his name, but with the whaling gear his identity was obvious.

“You—“ Teague blurted, going first cold with shock and then hot with embarrassment.

“Have to admit, you’re the last person I expected to meet back there,” Daud said, crossing his arms. With a flash of heat the memory of those strong arms around him came to Teague, who swallowed hard. “You seem to remember me about as well as I remember you.”

Teague felt a flush crawling up the back of his neck. He remembered him all too well, he felt at that moment. He wasn’t likely to forget him. He suddenly and sharply recalled the feel of his scar beneath Teague’s lips, the taste of his skin, the sheer power of his body against Teague’s. If Teague had known during that Fugue Feast that the man he’d fucked had been Daud himself, the Knife of Dunwall, he’d have… well. Probably fucked him anyway, if he was honest. Teague had always had a thing for strong men, and Fugue was Fugue, after all. 

“I remember you,” he admitted. Daud fixed him with his dark grey eyes.

“So I suppose you’re here looking for answers,” he said.

“Answers? About what?” Teague frowned in honest confusion. What was Daud talking about?

Daud stared at him for a moment. Then he turned to the other two. “Leave us,” he said.

“Master Daud…” began the man in blue. 

“I mean it, Thomas,” Daud said. “Go.” Thomas bowed, turned briefly, and vanished. Had Teague not read reports of the heresy of the Whalers, he’d have been startled.

“Sure you’ll be okay, old man?” asked the other red-coated Whaler. Teague realised with something like surprise that the Whaler was a woman. It wasn’t that he believed women were to be relegated to the household; it was more that her whaling gear removed any markers which might have revealed her gender. Which, he allowed, might have been the point. It certainly made her look as broad-shouldered as the men.

Daud didn’t reply to her, just turned and looked at her. She must have seen something in his gaze, for she vanished without further argument. Daud turned back to Teague.

“You haven’t figured it out yet, have you?” he said. “I thought that was why you’re here.”

“Pretend I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, because I really don’t.”

“Lupo mannero,” Daud replied. He pulled off his left glove and rolled up his sleeve. He held his forearm up. Winding up the wiry muscles of his forearm, wrist to elbow, was a long, white scar. It stood in stark contrast to the black mark on the back of his hand, breaking the intricate Pandyssian tattoos covering his skin. “You treated your blade with wolfsbane, didn’t you?”

Understanding broke over Teague like a cold wave. “Outsider’s eyes,” he gasped. “It was you-!” Rage surged in his veins, sudden adrenalin flooding his system and driving him to strain against the ropes binding him to the chair. They creaked loudly. “You did this to me! You made me a fucking monster!” 

The ropes snapped, no match for Teague’s enraged strength. He didn’t stop to wonder that he was stronger than he’d been before. He launched himself at Daud, who vanished and struck him between the shoulder blades. Teague snarled and spun, teeth bared, and caught him in the jaw with a vicious straight left jab. Daud’s head rocked on his shoulders from the blow. Teague felt his lips curl back in a feral grin. Daud growled. He tackled him and bore him down to the ground. They grappled, trying to gain the upper hand over each other. They were a close match in size and strength, but Daud was just that much bigger, just that much stronger; he got Teague pinned on his front, his arms twisted behind him.

“Let me go,” Teague growled.

“So you can attack me again? I don’t think so.” He bore down on Teague with his full weight, making Teague groan at the pull on his shoulders.

Teague growled wordlessly and bucked, trying to throw Daud off, but it was no use; Daud had him pinned as thoroughly as a bug in a box. He gave it up as a lost cause. “I won’t attack you. You’ve got answers, and I want them.”

Daud shifted slightly, lifting some of his weight off of Teague. When Teague made no move to escape, he leaned back further, more or less only keeping him immobilised by his grip on his arms. “Ask your questions.”

There were any number that were likely more important, but the first words out of Teague’s mouth were, “Why me?”

He felt Daud shrug. “You were invading my territory. I had to retaliate, I had to defend my place. You might have died just as easily as turned. Either way, I’d punished you.”

“Did you recognise me when you saw me?”

“Yes, though more from your scent than your face.” A hint of playfulness came into his voice: “I wouldn’t forget either in a hurry.”

Teague ignored that last. “How did you turn me? I don’t mean the bite, I mean… I’m an Overseer.” An ersatz Overseer, but that didn’t invalidate his faith. “I’m no heretic.”

“You think it has anything to do with the black-eyed bastard?” Daud sounded highly amused. “Not in the least. I became what I am before I even knew he really existed.”

“But the Tyvian legends…”

“Are just legends. I picked wolfsbane during a full moon. I was a child, I thought my mother would like the flowers.” He snorted. “You can guess how terrified I was the first time I turned. A boy, barely ten years old, turning into a full-grown wolf? You can’t imagine how much it hurt. It was agonising for years, until I’d gotten my full growth. At any rate, you being an Overseer doesn’t matter at all.”

“What do you mean?”

Daud stood and pulled Teague to his feet before going to sit against the wall. After a moment, Teague sat before him. “There’s a saying in Serkonos,” Daud said. “‘Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.’“ He caught and held Teague’s gaze, and for a moment it was like Teague had met the gaze of a wolf. “We all have the potential to become a beast, Overseer. It’s got fuck-all to do with the Abbey or the Outsider. It’s human nature.”

Both sat in sombre silence for some time. It made sense, Teague supposed; humans could be awful, brutal animals. The cruelties one man could visit upon another of his own accord were myriad and just as terrible as anything heretics did in the name of the Outsider. It didn’t bode well for Teague ever finding any sort of redemption in his life, but was true redemption even possible? No matter how guilty one felt for one’s actions, the weight of them would never lift. Blood was a permanent stain on the fabric of a person’s being. The light outside began to darken.

“Did you know I was here last night?” Teague finally asked, dreading the answer but needing to know.

“I heard your call, and I tracked you down. I kept away, though, I wasn’t sure how you’d take to me—“

“Do you know what I did?” Teague’s voice was hollow and barely audible.

“You don’t know?” Daud stared at him. Teague just shook his head. Daud sighed and leaned back against the crumbling wall. “Of course you don’t. You’re an Overseer. Denial is your primary state of being.”

Teague glared at him. “And I suppose you’re aware of what you do when you’re a wolf?” he snapped, suddenly and senselessly enraged again. Daud blinked, appearing taken aback. “No, I don’t fucking know! I blacked out before I’d even finished transforming, I have no memory of last night. Void take it, Daud, I woke up in someone else’s apartment covered in blood! I have no idea what I did, and it scares the shit out of me!” To his disgust and embarrassment, his voice trembled.

Something like pity came into Daud’s eyes. “You killed a family,” he said simply. Teague’s jaw dropped as a leaden weight struck the pit of his suddenly churning stomach. “Husband, wife, and their two little girls. Tore them apart.”

“Oh, spirits…” Teague looked at his shaking hands, and for a moment he could still see blood coating them. He gave a shuddering inhale and closed his eyes. Without opening them he asked, “Was there anyone else?” He made no attempt to hide the quaver in his voice. His eyes opened wide with undisguised horror. “Daud, did I kill anyone else?!”

“Just some rats.”

Teague gave a noise of relief and slumped forward. It hardly assuaged his guilt, but it helped to know he’d killed so few. They were too many, but at least they weren’t more. He was overwhelmingly grateful he’d gotten out of the Abbey; he remembered his dreams and the chaos and destruction he’d wrought in them. If he hadn’t left, they would have become gruesome reality, and he wasn’t sure he could bear that. Silence fell about them again. Daud produced a cigarette from somewhere about his person and lit it. He took a drag and offered it to Teague. Teague took it unhesitatingly, not even trying to hide the tremor in his hands.

“I had my men dispose of the bodies,” Daud said. “They weren’t happy, but they know the consequences of the Watch looking too close at this district. The Watch won’t have any idea what happened to them.” Teague nodded in gratitude, accepting the help without question.

“Did you see me?” he asked, finally looking at Daud.

“Yes. Followed you to the edge of the district, just before sunrise. I saw you go into that apartment. The owner’s been away for a few days.”

“What… what did I look like?” Almost as soon as he spoke, Teague realised he was asking a man he’d had sex with what he’d looked like, as if he were some girl asking a suitor. He flushed slightly but did not retract the question; he wanted to know if reality matched his dreams.

The corner of Daud’s lips twitched. He took a long pull off the cigarette, his eyes glittering, and exhaled slowly. The smoke wreathed his face like a promise. He passed it to Teague.

“Big,” he finally said. “Big and powerful. Impressive. That was unexpected. You’re not the first person I’ve turned, and to a one they’ve all been smaller than me by a long shot. But you…” Daud shook his head. “You’re my match.”

“Is that significant?” None of Teague’s research had said anything about size being of any importance.

Daud fixed him with another stare as he took the cigarette back. “If nothing else, it means you’re a predator, a wolf, by nature,” he replied. “Some of us take to it better than others; the ones who aren’t meant to be wolves are no bigger than hounds. The ones who are… well. You’ve seen me. If you were one of my men, I’d say it makes you my rival or my mate.” He gave Teague a crooked grin. “Given our history, probably more the latter.”

Teague’s ears burned. “It was Fugue, Daud,” he reminded him. “If all Fugue fucks implied marriage or a relationship, no one in the Isles would be single.”

“I know a few who would be. Anyway, I’d rather have you for a mate than a rival.” Daud took a drag off the cigarette and handed it to Teague. There was a mischievous light in his dark grey eyes.

Teague snorted and looked away as he finished the cigarette. His gaze found the window, and with a sinking feeling he realised night had nearly fallen. Daud followed his gaze.

“Scared?” he asked. Teague closed his eyes and nodded. “Don’t be.”

“How?” Teague demanded, looking hard at Daud. “What if I kill again? I can’t control myself. I have no awareness of what I’m doing. I could kill you and not know it!”

“I doubt that. I’m a wolf, too, don’t forget.” Daud stood and stretched languidly. He set to unbuckling and laying aside his equipment belts and then his clothing. Teague’s stare turned incredulous. Daud rolled his eyes. “Do you enjoy tearing your clothes?”

Teague swallowed and turned away from the sight of Daud’s increasingly bare torso and all that scarred olive skin and dark hair coming into view. He’d added a tattoo since that Fugue, Teague noticed before he turned away: a hand with an eye in the palm, just above his navel. Teague began to strip.

“Earlier you implied that you don’t lose yourself,” he said. He looked over at Daud, who by that point was entirely nude and utterly unashamed of it. He made no move to cover himself before Teague, and in fact seemed to revel in it. “How?”

Daud’s gaze found Teague’s and pinned him as wholly as his body had. “I don’t deny what I am,” he said. “I know it. I accept it. I’ve had years to accept it. As long as you deny it,” he stepped closer to Teague, “it will rule you.” He came close enough that their chests nearly touched. Teague was frozen in the midst of removing his shirt, his chest and shoulders bare. He realised he could smell Daud, a heady combination of leather and blood and cigarette smoke, all overlaying a unique scent that could only be Daud himself. He swallowed hard. “If you accept it, it will have no power over you.”

Daud’s gaze drifted down to Teague’s lips. Teague wished desperately that he could tell if it was Daud’s proximity or the impending change that was charging the air. Something was making his blood rise, and it was heating his body in a rush not unlike the rush of sex. He realised then that Daud’s eyes were changing. Daud came forward long enough to pull him into a brief, hard kiss that made Teague wonder if he was Daud’s mate after all, and retreated. His change was coming over him, the hair of his body bristling and spreading. Teague stared in fascination for a moment, but then the terrible pain of the night before rushed over him. He cried out, doubling over. Dimly, he heard Daud speaking:

“Accept it. It’ll be easier.”

Teague struggled out of his shirt and looked over at Daud in time to see him practically melt into a wolf, the transformation easy and slick and no more difficult than changing clothes, and Teague envied him. He dropped to his knees, panting brokenly as his bones moved and his muscle changed. His own transformation seemed to be moving more quickly, but it was no less painful. He felt a heavy paw come to rest on his back, felt soft, shaggy fur against his side and a tongue against his cheek. He turned his head; Daud sat next to him, as if offering support.

It was then that Teague remembered that natural wolves had been pack animals.

 

For a brief moment that night, Teague gained awareness of himself. He knew what he was doing and what was happening. Daud tackled him and bit the scruff of his neck as Teague had seen hound pups do, and let Teague roll and push him over. A fierce, pure joy suffused his entire being as they played; there was no other word for what they were doing, for all that in other lives they were grown men. It was as if he had only room for one emotion at a time, such that that particular emotion utterly consumed him. Playing with Daud, he knew no emotion other than delight.

 

The next morning, Teague awoke curled on himself again, but this time he was neither alone nor covered in blood. Daud was pressed against his back. His arm was a heavy weight over Teague’s waist. Teague had a flash of memory of them curling up together as wolves. He ached, but less so, Daud’s warm body against his soothing.

“Daud,” he half-whispered. 

“Hmm?” Daud pressed his nose to Teague’s neck.

“Where are we?”

“Still in the Flooded District.”

“What happened last night?”

Daud’s hand flattened against Teague’s belly, gentle and reassuring. He’d doubtless felt the sudden tension in Teague’s form, heard it in his voice.

“Hunted rats, scared the shit out of a guard, and annoyed my men,” Daud replied. “You didn’t kill anyone.”

Teague closed his eyes and went limp with relief. He felt Daud press a light, cautious kiss to his shoulder. As much as he was the reason for the problem in the first place, Teague couldn’t help but be glad Daud was there for him, with him. Daud had had every reason to abandon Teague to whatever fate awaited a lone werewolf scared out of his mind and overpowered by his own bloodlust, likely to die at the hands of the City Watch if he didn’t get himself killed some other way. He could have killed him himself when Teague returned to the cul-de-sac where they’d fought, or killed him for attacking him a second time, or even when he was midway through the transformation and vulnerable to attack. But he’d only helped him, only answered his questions with plain honesty. 

Teague hadn’t had a wolfhound in years, but he knew hounds only turned on their handlers because of fright, disease, or self-defence. Teague couldn’t deny that by walking into his territory, he’d more or less invited Daud to attack him. It was an animal’s logic, Teague knew, but wasn’t he part animal now? And he knew that, had he not spoken to Daud, had he not gotten answers to his questions and had someone there with him when he transformed again, that he would have killed again. Having Daud around had evidently kept him from completely losing control of himself, as he had the first night. Was it only his presence? Natural wolves were pack animals; perhaps werewolves were as well.

He remembered playing with him like a hound, remembered the joy he’d known. Teague rolled onto his back and stroked his thumb down Daud’s scar. Daud turned his head to kiss his wrist, his eyes focused on Teague’s. Teague traced his thumb along Daud’s cheekbone and down to his lips. He stared at them for a moment, and then pulled Daud down to kiss him. Daud made a sound that was almost a growl, dark and feral and all-too-reminiscent of that Fugue Feast. It sent a wash of heat right down Teague’s spine, and he unthinkingly got one leg hooked around Daud’s hips. 

After, Daud chuckled tiredly. Teague forced his eyes to open and looked down at him where he’d rested his head atop Teague’s chest. He felt loose-limbed and languid, content to lie boneless on the floor. 

“What?” he asked, stroking Daud’s scar with his thumb again. Daud grinned.

“Knew you were really my mate,” he said smugly.

Teague groaned and dropped his head back to the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> Ngl I would have preferred less slash, but they wanted to do the do, so who am I to argue? When you write by the seat of your pants, you just go with it or you'll never get anything done. I'm sort of writing a third bit, and it'll be more horror than slash. *Rubs hands together* Uncle Jasper gets to write about gore, kiddies! Not sure when I'll have it finished and posted. Not tomorrow, certainly, but soon. Hopefully. Also, keep an eye on my fanart tumblr, the one sharing this handle, for doodly illustrations from this fic; those should be going up soon, either today or tomorrow.


End file.
